


Step By Step (That's Too Many, Put Some Back God)

by EternalEclipse



Series: continuing kitsune catastrophes [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, During the timeskip, Gen, Kitsune, Kitsune Ichigo, Minor Violence, Tags will be added as necessary, kitsunegeddon, no one's dead in this one yet at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-15 06:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalEclipse/pseuds/EternalEclipse
Summary: The Winter War has been over for some time now, and Ichigo's mostly acclimated back to life in Karakura. He's starting to get much better at this whole kitsune business too, even if it's nowhere near perfect.So, obviously, it's time for the rest of the spiritual world to start barging right back in.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is pending change because I'm not sure I'm a fan, but there you go. 
> 
> This comes right after 'Learning To Be Fine' and might not make much sense if you haven't read that first! 
> 
> Also glad to have y'all! I hope you enjoy this! And, as always, if there are any errors you see or tags you don't please let me know! You can find me at eclipsemidnight on tumblr, and I'm always up for a chat.

“Damn it.”

Ichigo glared at the shirts he was holding as if they had personally offended him. He hated shopping for clothes for himself, but even he had to admit with all of the accidents that had been happening lately, it wasn’t something he could avoid.

He walked the two steps it took to cross the changing room, trying to get a feel for the skinny jeans he was trying on. And then a scent reached his nose, and all he could do was sneeze into the corner. Several sparks flew up from the wall, though Ichigo managed to wave it out before it could actually catch on fire. At least it wasn’t his clothing this time. “Damn it,” he repeated, trying to focus on anything that would keep the fire away.

He gave the wall a rueful look, before taking off the jeans. He’d buy them, and hopefully no one would notice until well after he was gone, at least.

* * *

Rin, for her part, had found the entire thing hilarious.

“You—ha—you can deal with a _tenth_ of the frustration—ahaha—that I did when you took _months_ to make any progress on the— _oh, Inari-sama_ —the basics.”

Ichigo sighed. It was true, he’d taken a long time to be able to sense anything in Karakura. While he still wasn’t the best at it, he wasn’t as “utterly hopeless” as he had been once upon a time. Not that he’d had any plan to get stuck with dealing with any of these powers. “Well, I can control those basics now. And getting stronger means I can do things better. But what do I do with _fire_?”

Rin’s laughter settled down. “Well, it could be a sign that your second tail’s growing in.”

“Isn’t that supposed to take a century? It hasn’t even been a year since I started any of this!”

Rin shrugged, her tails making a similar gesture as she did. “Maybe it’s just because you’re weird. Most of us are born or reincarnated or whatever without half-being older kitsune. Just because you’ve only got your newborn’s star ball doesn’t mean that having the older ones in your soul didn’t do anything. Even when I asked around, no one had ever heard of something like that happening before, so…”

“So what?” Ichigo’s face untwisted with curiosity.

“So nothing.” Rin shrugged. “You’ve got fire now. Cool beans. Don’t set things on fire where the regular humans can see it.”

“Cool beans!?” Ichigo immediately began to scowl again. “And how do I do that?

Rin grinned, right in his face. “Practice!”

And that was how Ichigo had found himself back at the river. There were parts where the banks dropped off a bit from the path and created some hidden alcoves. He figured that between that and his newfound sensing ability, he’d be able to make sure no one was able to see what he was doing, and that the river would prevent him from accidentally setting a fire that could grow too fast.

He ripped up bits of leftover paper and held it up, focusing on it. Being able to spontaneously set things on fire had to be useful. And maybe if he could set something on fire when he wanted to, he could stop the random ones. There were only so many school uniforms he could buy before someone would wonder why, and it wasn’t like he could wear the ones he’d accidentally burnt holes into.

He stared at the piece of paper, blue lines wavering slightly as he twitched, but it remained utterly unmoved.

“Damn it!” Ichigo growled, pulling the arm back to his side. As if it were an ocean to add salt to his wounds, a small wave hit a rock right next to Ichigo, went up into the air, and soaked that hand, the paper, and a little of his clothing on that side. Ichigo cursed again, glaring at the soggy paper. He crumpled it and stood. He was done with this.

That wasn’t the worst insult to injury he faced that day. Ichigo was halfway to Unagiya’s by the time he realized he was still clutching the ruined paper. He further crumpled it in his fist and turned around, looking for the nearest trash can. Upon seeing that there weren’t any nearby, he ground his teeth together. At that moment, a spark fell from his hands onto the concrete sidewalk.

The paper didn’t last very long after that.

* * *

The case for Ichigo’s sanity wasn’t looking all too great either. Unagiya had had more in the way of deliveries than manual labor for him on that particular day, and he hadn’t been quite this level of frustrated since he’d learned enough about kitsune transformation to hide his tail with it.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know anything about what color this chair is supposed to be, I was only hired to deliver it,” Ichigo delivered in the most customer-facing voice he had to offer. “If there are any issues, you should take it up with the company you bought this from, not us.”

Ichigo was only halfway through his list of assignments, but it seemed that every one of them had some problem or defect or other, and for some reason people thought he could do anything about it. Normally, he’d just put on his customer service face, which he’d become quite good at after all of this, and deal. But normally he wasn’t also dealing with the powers of spontaneous accidental fire acquisition.

It was a miracle he’d gotten through the day without burning anyone, richly deserved or otherwise. Even Ishida had been safe from it all, and that had taken _effort_.

It was also annoying in the sense that he’d started doing so many things on the basis that he was practicing his sensing and, more recently, his transformations. He couldn’t focus on either when he was trying not to be outed as a budding furry pyromaniac and arsonist.

It was that mindset that had him trying to access his inner world. There was an odd dichotomy between where Zanshi was _him_ in a way that Red and Shion had been separate, but Zanshi was also so much younger that the powers he was dealing with now showcased his age. Rin had wondered if that was why the fire was fighting him so much, but Ichigo didn’t much care, except for whether doing something about it would make it so he could fix the entire situation.

In any case, he still had to get through the day without any accidents. That was _much_ easier said than done. Ichigo was beginning to wish for the days when he’d not been able to make the kitsune powers work at all. That was easier than this madness.

Somehow, he still managed to get back to Unagiya’s shop without any incidents. He breathed a sigh of relief when he walked in the door, making a beeline for the water as soon as he could. He could just stay inside here, fixing up the stock, until it was time for him to go. If he was lucky, the door wouldn’t even ring and he wouldn’t have to worry about any customers.

Of course, Ichigo had never been so lucky. Nearly three-quarters of the way through dealing with Unagiya’s stock, Ichigo heard the tinkle of the bell ringing and turned towards the noise. “Welcome to— _you!”_  He shouted when he saw the face.

“Yo!” Shinji grinned back at him. There was a new haircut, though Ichigo was a bit surprised to see him in human clothing. After all, the guy was back to being a captain. It stood to reason that that came with a haori and everything. Not…this.

“Wow, Ichigo, you work in this place?” Shinji dragged his hand gently through his cropped hair.

“I’m sure you already know the answer to that, or you wouldn’t have been looking for me here,” Ichigo grumbled. “What’s going on, Hirako?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shinji waved him off. “I think there’s somethin’ you need to see.” 

“Alright,” Ichigo  sighed. “Lay it on me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ichigo reacts to Shinji's news, and starts turning over a new leaf with regard to his kitsune abilities.

The weekend saw Ichigo on a train to Ōta City. He’d been able to take the time off of work easily enough, telling Unagiya that he was visiting universities. His father had been a little more of a harder sell, but he managed it in the end. He had his copy of _The Tempest_ in his lap and headphones in his ears, but couldn’t concentrate on either.

His mind wandered back to what Shinji had shown him. He supposed it didn’t change anything to know that Aizen was still alive. That the guy was locked up in some kind of bondage chair in the kind of prison where you locked them up deep and threw away the key. The important thing was that he couldn’t be a threat to Ichigo’s friends and family anymore.

He hadn’t asked about the shinigami legal system he’d seen, or whatever that room actually was. He would have to eventually, though. While he didn’t think they were inclined to call him or his friends on invading the Seireitei after all this time, the thought that Shinji and the others were facing that had set his curtains on fire, and he’d had to pretend that that was fine.

The process…it hadn’t seemed very fair. If they did go after his friends, they probably wouldn’t be able to say anything in their own defense. He wondered if it had been like that for Rukia too. Or maybe it had just been precautions about Aizen, who was to say?

But while Shinji had looked triumphant, there was tight edge of worry that gave him away. Ichigo thought he understood that. His sensing had pulsed so strongly that he’d gotten a headache afterwards, and it was centered upon those anxieties. Aizen was supposed to be pretty canny, on par with Urahara, and if anyone was going to be able to get out of that kind of situation it was someone with his brain.

But there was nothing to be done about it, Ichigo reminded himself. Shinji was already gone. He’d left pretty quickly since he apparently needed to get back to the other Vizards, something about them and the shinigami. Ichigo needed the time in any case. It also wasn’t like any of them expected Ichigo to be doing anything about it, especially since he didn’t have reiatsu anymore. What could he do, anyway? They hadn’t even been supposed to tell him about it from what Shinji had said.

He also wasn’t going to get anywhere by dwelling on Aizen, especially while he wasn’t an immediate concern, so he closed his book, giving up any pretense that he’d read another word of it, and went over what he knew about what he was doing.

He was supposed to be meeting Rin’s old mentor. He really didn’t know how to feel about that. While Rin had been the closest thing he’d had to a teacher in kitsune things, she really hadn’t become a mentor in the time he’d gotten to know her. A friend, mostly, but he’d ended up stumbling into most of what he’d learned over the months about his powers despite her best attempts.

While they weren’t really worse than Rukia’s methods of teaching him, they still kind of sucked, and of the three kitsune powers he’d been able to access, only his shapeshifting had come with her exercises, and that hadn’t even been the goal of that one.

And this was the person who taught her. On one hand, Rin was extremely competent. She’d also had a lot to say about this ‘Hoshi’, all of it good.

On the other side, this person only wanted to meet him because he was some kind of anomaly. He wasn’t unfamiliar with that idea.  He’d been an anomaly as a shinigami as well, both for being a substitute and later for having an inner hollow. He’d even been an anomaly as a human because of how he could see spirits, or even for his natural hair color. But he wasn’t a freakshow, and like hell if he was going to trot himself out for someone who was looking for one.

He’d decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. He really needed a better teacher now that he had Zanshi. The kit was so young he didn’t know what to do with him, and his powers were starting to come in so quickly. Red and Shion hadn’t done much to teach him, somewhat understandably given their circumstances but still annoying, and it had become clear that Rin had no idea of how to teach, or any idea of how to work with him, since he was apparently a lot different than she had been expecting. This would be like the Vizards, when he first went to them. He’d use this person for as far as they could take him, and if that was nowhere then he’d keep going at it on his own.

The train bumped to a stop, and he checked it. One more stop. He sighed, picking up his phone and checking through it quickly. Nothing new, not that he was expecting it.

Ichigo’s sensing was slipping away as he got further away from Karakura, until he had to work to open himself up for it. He hoped it was because of the distance and not a lapse in control. When the train started back up, Ichigo thought to himself that at least he hadn’t set the traincar on fire yet. That might be a little harder to explain.

The train shuddered to a stop again, and he shoved his things into his backpack. One way or the other, he was going to make it count.

He stepped off of the train, looking around to see if anyone caught his eye. Apparently Hoshi would be able to sense him. He didn’t doubt it, but he was still a bit dubious that he wasn’t given any more information.

Ichigo’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he dug it out to take a look as the train left behind him.

**_From: Rin  
_ ** _so, hoshi-sensei says that they see you, and they want you to find them_

Ichigo frowned at it. Another test? _Really?_

**_To: Rin_ ** _  
fine._

Hoshi had to be nearby, since they couldn’t be sure that he would be able to manage it, and since Rin said that they could see him. He was definitely looking forward to getting them to say what they were thinking. He wasn’t some show dog, doing tricks on command.

But he did need a teacher, and fast. If he’d been home, he’d be patting out sparks with how he was feeling.

As it turned out, opening himself up to sensing in a city this dense and populated was a trial and a half. In theory, it would be muted by how far he’d come, since he was definitely outside the area he’d become responsible for. But then it would also be more pressing because of the sheer vitality around him, many times the number of people his senses had to contend with on a daily basis.

Both of those together left him awash in indistinct noise, and he immediately had to close his senses after opening them just so he didn’t lose himself to it. He’d done that once, shortly after Zanshi had appeared and the abilities amplified themselves, and he remembered how terrified Rin had looked when he’d come back to himself with her help.

That attempt failed, Ichigo decided to hoof it to the nearest shrine and hope for the best. Clearly this wasn’t going to work, and he needed to clear his head before it exploded. A quick search on his phone said that there was one within five blocks of the train station. He could manage mental blocks for five blocks.

Three blocks in, he had to stop in an alley to rub at his temples. It wasn’t really in his head, but he’d seriously underestimated how loud the city would feel. He’d been avoiding Naruki City because of the background noise, and Ōta was at least twice as much. There wasn’t much he could do except try to breathe and settle himself. Only two more blocks to go, and the shrine would offer some protection.

“Hello there,” Ichigo heard from behind him. He immediately went on alert, whirling so that his back was to the wall and his fists were raised to protect him from any blows coming his way.

“I’m not going to hurt you, kit,” an older woman stepped towards him, dressed like any career woman he’d expect to see in an office. “Especially if you’re the one that Rin-chan was telling me about.” 

Ichigo relaxed slightly. “You’re Hoshi-san, then?”

“Indeed,” the woman smiled slightly. “I’ll take us both to the shrine now, if you don’t mind?”

“No one will see anything?” He looked out at the streets dubiously.

“Nothing they wouldn’t expect to.”

Ichigo stared at her for as long as he could stand, before his head roared out in pain again. That had been a spectacularly bad idea, and he had no idea if this one was any better. But he’d come all this way already, so he was going to see it through the end. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taking so long, things have been busy over here. I've got a little bit done on the next chapter, but not a lot, so hopefully I'll be able to get it up soon.


End file.
